Two Freedom Flights of veterans, one from Iowa and another from Mississippi, arrived in D.C. today to visit their war memorials, but were halted by barricades. Many of the veterans served in World War II and in Korea. As Bryan Preston noted in an earlier post, several House GOP members intervened to make sure those vets could visit the World War II Memorial.
I happened to be driving by, and received a phone call from a congressional staffer telling me what was going on. I caught some of the scene on video just as several busloads of Freedom Flight vets were about to leave.
In this first video, Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN-6) describes the sequence of events leading to the members of Congress intervening:
Here, Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-1) explains why he and his colleagues crashed the Park Service barricades:
Needless to say, the Park Service was not happy. This spokeswoman, who didn’t explain why she hadn’t been furloughed, tried her best to castigate the members of Congress without appearing cold-hearted:
She explained that any enforcement action taken against the congressmen will have to be decided by her political-appointee bosses.
NextGenerationTV’s Michelle Fields tweets that Park Police have shown up on the scene to expel any remaining vets.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member